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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now, on to the episode Experts Club.
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B
Ops Experts club.
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C
That's it. 100%. Taren, I think. I think we're on some. I think that interest.
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B
What are we on to?
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C
I think we could, like, maybe take that on the road and think if you and I did, like a combo intro together, like song, dance, a jig, maybe we can make something pretty cool out of that.
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B
Yeah, I got a jingle I still need to make my jingle.
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C
I love jingles. Is it. Is it good? Like a scale of 1 to 10 good? Not so good.
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B
It will be good.
- [00:45]
C
Dude, that's it? That's all you need. You sold me on it. Well done. Speaking of sales, we thought today we would talk about a sales and marketing plan. So, you know, we've been talking about annual planning. It's the fourth quarter here and we're prepping to start up the new year. And, you know, we just got back from annual planning. We talked about what goes into an annual plan. A few weeks ago, we did an annual plan retrospective perspective, like Taryn because. And we had some whole etymology discussion about the word. And then from there, I thought from annual plan to the annual plan retrospective perspective, then moving on to. How do you monetize that, though? Like what, what do you do with those goals? You come out on your planning, you have goals. How are we going to execute to that? And so we've contracted with somebody that I think is really, really smart. Her name is Rachel Stivers. She has a marketing agency called the Platform Consulting Agency. And she does an excellent job at helping you firm up your SAM plan, sales and marketing plan. And so I think that, you know, we had talked about today would be a great thing to walk people through. How do I make my annual plan actionable? And Sam plans it. Way to do it. What do you think?
- [01:51]
B
Yeah, Rachel's great. She's been a. A previous guest on the show as well. We've had her on, so you might, might be familiar to some of you. Um, and she is just great at all things marketing and the SAM plan in general being the start of it, but then the execution of marketing as well, all the way, all the way through to the end. She's brilliant mind in that area.
- [02:14]
C
Yeah, you know, she, she was an accountant by trade and moved into Marketing. So her degree is in accounting. She started as an accountant and then moved into a marketing mind. So I think one of the things I love most about Rachel. So Rachel is Pete Vargas's main marketer. She does. That's where she started. That's where we met her. I actually was part of the hiring of bringing her into Pete's organization as their cmo. And then from there, Pete started with Rachel Platform marketing consulting. You know, this whole idea of they're going to be an agency that actually does marketing not only for Pete, but for Pete's clients and other people that are Pete's friends. And then people that, you know, obviously like us were referring her out. So the thing I love about Rachel is she's done marketing for some really big names, you know, Grant Cardone, Pete Vargas, the worries, you know, like, just done some really big name stuff, but also has a mind that's not just. Sometimes with marketers, I feel like you can get a little woo. Woo. Yeah. I mean, where it's like all like flash and smoke and mirrors, like. Yeah. But is this working? Like, are we making traction? Are we just getting on these calls and just talking in circles and getting excited about ideas? But it's like we're not like, metrically drilling down on it. You know, I think ads sometimes you can get back to like a roas or like a return on your investment when it comes to marketing dollars that goes into it. But other than that, like, are we really paying attention to metrics? And Rachel's Sam plan for me is the beauty of marrying her marketing mind with her accounting mind, because it takes it and it makes all of your metrics very trackable. Like, let's convert all of our energies into numbers and, and then let's ask ourselves the hard question on, are we making our goals?
- [03:52]
B
Yeah. And they go into great detail even on sources too. You know, where is everything going to come from? Where should we allocate these leads and these sales from? And then once you know where you want your sources to be or what buckets you have for that, that's where your energies are going in. If you've got affiliates, that's. That's a different subset of people managing than, than ads or even email marketing or even events, event leads or anything like that, Your sources really tell you. Okay, which people need to be focused in on which area at which time.
- [04:27]
C
Yeah, I mean, Rachel's tool is really pretty brilliant and brilliantly simple. Right. Cause sometimes I think that I, I see brilliant tools and I'm like, wow, that thing is so amazing. I'm so intimidated by that. Like, what do I do with that? You know, I mean, like it looks really cool and, but that doesn't look easy. The thing that I love about Rachel's tool is it's stupid, simple but profound. You know, I mean, and, and it's exactly like you're saying, she has you line out all your offering, you know, she has you say, okay, what products are we trying to sell and what services are we trying to sell and what are our big launches for the year? You know, because a lot of times we're coming into launch season at certain times there what's a big affiliate push? Like you were saying, like what, where do the different dollars have to match? And then the thing I love about the tool is from a very accounting based place. What was our budget to actuals? Like what were we estimating this thing was going to achieve? You know what I mean? I do think it has a place for dollars put in and expected dollars coming out. But more than that, it's like, no, no, what were we intending to achieve with this product line, with this service line item, with this launch, with these affiliates, whatever your offerings are. And then did we make it? And if we didn't make it, what does that do to roll forward into the next quarter? Because if quarter one goals don't make it, it should be changing the directive for quarter two. It shouldn't be something where you're like panicking at the end of the year that you didn't make your annual number. It's like, no, no, no. Did we make our goal? Did we not make our goal? If we didn't make our goal, that rolls forward. If we want to hit our annual goal, it doesn't just become something. We're like, dang it, we missed it. It's like, no, no, no, that, that needs to change. And I think it also puts some good pressure between sales and marketing by putting them on the same page, right? Rachel talks about it when she talks about the sales and marketing plan. She talks about the beauty of what she feels like this plan offers is that sales and marketing have to play nice together because they both decide what the goals are. And then that way sales can't be like, well, they're bringing me the wrong leads. And marketing can be like, these guys can't close for crap. You know what I mean? And it's like, no, no, no, we're all on the same page. We all decide this is the way we're going to go after it. And There becomes that mutual trust. And when we don't meet our goal, how do we then make our goal next quarter as we roll it forward?
- [06:33]
B
Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, if there's two teams that can easily deflect responsibility onto each other for not hitting what they're doing at sales and marketing, and. And, you know, they can sometimes live in a silo. And marketing might take the ball to a certain point and then just say, now it's sales turn, and then they take it to a certain point. But if they're not in constant communication from the beginning, then it's really easy to get frustrated or to wait until you get to the end of the quarter to ask why this didn't happen. You'd be like, well, we didn't get good leads from marketing. By that point, it's too late to even mention it. So getting together at the beginning to really look at your plan as a sales and marketing team just solves so much from the beginning, so much pain.
- [07:18]
C
Right? Because I think that it's like anything. So let's break it down in a way that a lot of people understand. You know, in. On a construction job, let's say that you want to go and you want to build a house, and you have to get all the subs out there, and you have a general contractor that's, like, out there, and you hire the guys who are going to do your foundation, and then you got the framers that come in and do the walls, and then you have your drywallers that come in and wrap it. You know, I mean, and you have the siding guys that do it from the outside, and you have the roofers that come in. Well, the trades can sometimes get behind, and a lot of times they'll point the finger at the other guy. Well, I couldn't get my stuff done because this guy didn't have his stuff done. And what it needs is that general contractor that steps and says, hey, enough's enough. Like, this is what we are all on. You all gave me your. Your timeline. We all had the understanding of how long it's going to take. Your work is going to, you know, pirouette and. And. And tailor up to the next trade coming behind them. And I just need you to be able to finish your stuff. The sale, the sales and marketing plan really is that GC is that general contractor that's bringing the whole thing together and saying, hey, so we're expecting sales to be able to close at this, and we're expecting this kind of Result from the marketing. And when they don't meet in the middle, we're not going to spend time pointing fingers at each other. We're going to come to a spot where. No, no. Let's determine where was the miss and how do we work together to make it better next round. Rather than marketing's got a plan, sales has got a plan. Marketing hits their plan and they're like, yes, bonus us out based upon our plan. But snails can't close. Right. Or sales is like, yes, like bonus me out. But really they're selling a bunch of stuff that isn't what marketing was offering. And then it like ricochets and comes back to customer service as people wanting to default on payments or wanting to, you know, like, dispute whether or not their car should be charged because they're not getting what they were promised by the sales guy. This takes it and breeds it all into one and says, hey, like this is a combined plan. I think I as a marketing team can bring in this kind of traffic. Sales, what do you think you can close of that kind of traffic? Awesome. That's. We're going to put in the budgeted and then as we come back at the end, let's look at the actuals and if we didn't hit the actuals, let's have a conversation about it because then that's going to roll forward into what kind of efforts we're going to put into the front end. Did marketing not meet his numbers? Okay, well that's not cry ever spilled milk. That's. That's fix those metrics. Did sales not make its numbers? Okay, well let's determine where that miss was made and let's fix it. But we're all operating from the same sheet of music. It's like an orchestra.
- [09:34]
B
Right.
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C
We're all playing to the same to the same tunes in different ways, but at the same time trying to create a masterpiece. And I think that's what the sales marketing plan really can do for us.
- [09:43]
B
Yeah. And I think there's going to be usually two main avenues we can look at on the sales and marketing plan of what we're doing. And we like to think of them as like day to day sales and then event specific sales. An event is kind of a loose term. It can be a webinar, it can be a launch, it can be an actual conference, it can be speaking on somebody else's stage, it could be a podcast, but it's a specific thing on a date and time on a calendar. That's an event. Day to Day sales would be the customer through line journey of your lead magnets, you know, leveling up between different products they can offer on their own, getting on calls with sales team, you know, things that are just happening constantly. So first thing you want to do when you get together and determine your Sam plan is really look at your marketing calendar. So day to day sales will be one thing, but then what do we have going on this year on the calendar? Do we have any events? Do we need to start creating events and looking at events to fill this expected income we want at the end of the year?
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C
I think that the beautiful thing about that Taran, what you just lined out there, which was masterfully done, by the way, masterfully out there, very well thought through. I think that what it does show you too is as we're traveling at a deficit, maybe that's what informs me that I, in fact I'm going to have to add in another event because if we're not making our, our daily sales, if we're not hitting our goals, maybe if our Quarter 2 event didn't perform right, well, that should inform me on, hey, we probably need to enter in another event. Do we need to start doing some sort of webinar? Do we need to start doing somebody else's stage? Well, what's the thing that we need to do to drive revenue to be able to meet our goals? Because that doesn't just happen magically. So if we are in quarter one, quarter two down, we're down by this percentage. Well, how are we going to bring that back up? And I think a lot of visionaries don't operate like that. A lot of company, a lot of companies don't operate like that. They have in their mind, well, this, this should be a fourth, a $4 million launch. I know that we've worked with entrepreneurs in the past that had come at that and it's like, well, but how did you come to that number? And it was just like, just, just what they thought it was worth. Just what they like were coming up. They were just pulling numbers out of the clouds. And it's like, well, man, yeah, I really would love the golden goose to produce that egg too. But like, realistically is it and if it doesn't, what's our game plan next? And then it' knee jerk reactions to things, you know, I mean, or a lot of undue pressure put on people in ways that it's like, well, that's not really fair. Like was the goal realistic in the first place? So I do love Rachel when she Puts together her Sam plans, she'll say, hey, let's look at historic numbers. How have these performed? In fact, she like some of the first set of questions she came to us with that we're actually going to talk with her about today is, hey, what has worked in the past and what kind of results have you seen out of it? You know, and then what are the problems that you feel like you solve from your customer's point of view? What are their words for the sake of how are we wrapping it and how can we make this perform even better? So I think that she does a great job at identifying what are the vehicles and then also, like, how can we make that perform better? And then as you hold it to plan, like, okay, so everything works to plan until it doesn't. Right. So how can we make it not knee jerk, but it's just, no, no, no. If that doesn't work, we know that these are the levers we need to pull to be able to lift our sales to compensate for that in the upcoming quarters.
- [12:51]
B
Yeah. And a good thing you brushed up on there when you're talking about how much you want to earn is if you don't have historicals yet, it could be a little bit harder for you that first go round to be able to work the numbers backwards. You could have goals, but they could be off the first time you do something. But as soon as you start doing these things over and over again and getting into different niches and deciding where you actually do want to speak because your more profitable segment of customers comes from there, then you can actually determine, okay, if I put X amount of ads into this event and I'm going to give this talk and sell this product and we can expect this many registrations we know we're going to make between this and this amount just based on history. And so that's really going to be helpful too. Further down the road, the more you do this every year, you're just going to keep compiling that data.
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C
Yeah. And I think another thing along those lines that's really smart that you touched in on there as well is what's a realistic goal if you don't have. Have data informing you, like I would say, be conservative in your goals. Right. What's your, what's your realistic goal and then what's your stretch goal? It's fine for you to have a stretch goal, but let's make sure we call it a stretch goal. And like, let's not come into it expecting everything and let's come in it and Expecting, hey, but conservatively I think we can probably expect about this, this amount. And however you extrapolate that, right, like that probably starts at the beginning, right from the beginning. If you're running ads like how many opt ins are we hoping for? And from those opt ins, how many people are we hoping are going to actually show up on the webinar? And from those, how many that show up on the webinar, what's a realistic closing ratio? We think we can close from whether that be, you know, click to buys or book calls, you know, and from the book, if it's book of calls, what do we think that the show ratio is going to be on the book of calls? And then what's the closing for our, our sales guys? And from there let's extrapolate realistic numbers. Use percentages that are conservative, don't set your people up to fail and then maybe incentivize them to be able to actually hit those reach goals so that it's something that is something we can all celebrate together. Because I think if you do it the other way, you don't have a historical data. You pulled a wild ass, wild ass number out of the clouds, you know, I mean like just wild ass guests. So you know, wag out of the clouds. Yeah, maybe we might hit that. But you're probably going to be setting yourself up for frustration, disappointment and overwhelm. Right. So let's be realistic on things we haven't vetted before. So use historicals on what we have historicals for and then be conservative on what you have that is new and then from there use that as historical moving forward. Like it's okay not to have tried some before. Just don't come to it. Visionaries are so classic with this is my best idea ever. I know this, this is going to kill. I know so many people are going to buy this and it's like, but do you like nobody knows until we try it, right? So I think that just come at it realistic.
- [15:38]
B
Yes. And your people will be much happier if they can hit an attainable goal or even get close to an attainable goal than just be way off of a goal that was a wag, just a wild ass goal. They're not going to be happy either and they're going to feel like they were set up for failure from the beginning.
- [15:56]
C
I know Daryl, who is part of Ops Experts Academy, has a martial arts gym up the street. I train with him twice a week. And I've learned with Daryl, he'll say, hey, go ahead and just Give me how many, however many you can do real quick. And I've learned, no, no, that's code for he's gonna make me do more the next time. Right. And so I'm always like, well, like, how many though, you think? Or like, I'll make him do it based on an amount of time or something like that. I'll. I'll try and re ratchet it back from my direction because I've just learned, like, he's like, no, just do as many as you can do in one minute. And so then I do 50, like, whatever the exercise is. And he goes, awesome. That was a great job. Take a breather. Okay, next time we're going to do a minute, I'd like you to do 60. I mean, I like whatever it is, because he's going to push me. So you're kind. You're going to get your way in the end. Visionary. Sometimes it just takes, like, we need to establish a bar so that we know what we're going to push people to. But if you don't have a bar, all you're setting yourself up for is discouragement and frustration, right? Your people are going to be discouraged. You're going to be frustrated. So, like, let's determine what the bar is first round, and then from there, then make your goal. I think we could lift that by 10%. Let's try it. And if you can't buy 10%, then maybe next time. I think we can lift it by this much, depending on what kind of a bar you established by the second time you roll it out. But I think the sales and marketing plan in my mind makes it very metric because we're assigning very specific things to very expected goals that are going to be getting us towards our end of year, where we want to end up here. If you want to make a million this year, if you want to make 3 million this year, if you want to make 10 million this year, that's building blocks. And if one of the building blocks doesn't perform, it's going to put other weight on the rest of the building blocks. And you need to be able to say, okay, so obviously, I can't expect that out of this line item. How much more of a percentage can I ratchet out of some of these other performers? And I think it's just a beautiful metric way to determine goals.
- [17:41]
B
Yes, it's a beautiful piece of art, too. Once you put it together and you get to look at is Sharon.
- [17:47]
C
It is a beautiful piece of art. So if you guys are interested in a sales and marketing plan. We would love to make an instruction to you to Rachel Stivers or you can look her up. Plat Consulting Agency, I think is is PCA is what they go by, but have a SAM plan. If you need a SAM plan model, I think she I think she might offer one as a lead magnet. I'm not sure, but we can try and get that over to you. Hit us up on our socials. And we'd love to make the intro or get you a lead to her lead magnet. Ops Experts, thanks for joining us today. Taryn Turner, Always. It's just a high honor to be with you on the show every single week.
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B
Hi, High honor.
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C
We'll see you guys all next week here on Ops Experts Club.
- [18:23]
B
See ya.